“That is what I canna tell,” said Mrs. Saltoun; “there’s wheels within wheels, especially in foreign parts. Maybe the Count wasna a grand enough match, maybe--I canna tell you; it’s a’ guess-work; but I am very sure of one thing, that she was not an innocent woman, with nothing on her conscience when she went away.” “I hope she is no relation of mine,” said I. “Harry has found out that I had a grandfather, and all about him. Oh, only suppose, Mrs. Saltoun, this dreadful beauty should turn out to be my aunt! That _would_ be delightful!” I said to myself after a while, with a kind of bitter satisfaction; “not to live in the red-brick house alone, but to live with a dreadful old beauty who would be sure to be haunted. That would be purgatory, enough, to please anybody; and Mortimer is not at all a common name.” My old lady looked up at me half frightened. “Don’t say such a thing, Mrs. Langham, my dear. I would not say a word against any person’s character, far less one that might turn out a relation of yours. But, for all that I’ve no right to interfere, I would set my face against the like of you setting up house with ony such person. I would speak to the Captain mysel’. Hout! here I’m taking’t up as if it was true; but if it should be so that, in the order of Providence, the Captain was to go, you mustna take up just with ony relation without considering if they would make ye happy. You must be careful where you go--you must----” “Happy?” cried I. It seemed like mockery and a kind of insult;--as if I could be happy when Harry, perhaps, was in danger, perhaps wounded or ill, in suffering, and away from me! “Whisht, whisht,” said Mrs. Saltoun. “I ken ye better than ye ken yourself. It’ll be hard, hard work at first; but when the parting’s over you’ll get hopeful, and think o’ the meeting again; and ye’ll ay get letters to cheer ye; and with the baby and the sun shining you’ll be happy before you ken. But I maunna have ye settled down with the like of yon Miss Mortimer. Na! na! naething like that, if she were twenty times an aunt. Far better stay on still with me, that would ay be coming and going to cheer you up. Yon’s a woman without a heart. I must speak to the Captain mysel’.”